Thursday, January 24, 2013

Suggest check out the various links and short video clips presented, all of which can be found at the DARPA sites.

The plan is to repair dead satellites by snipping, clipping, and replacing --- but remember this a DARPA funded program. Not necessarily bad. We have DARPA's help with Information Processing Techniques Officewhich has helped make the Internetwhat it is. But, hmmm ... watch the videos and let your mind create your own science fiction alternate history.

DARPA’s planned Phoenix program is intended to develop and demonstrate technologies to cooperatively harvest and re-use valuable components from retired, nonworking satellites in geosynchronous orbit (GEO) at greatly reduced cost.

Today, when a communication satellite fails, it usually means the expensive prospect of having to launch a brand new replacement communication satellite. Many of the satellites that are obsolete or have failed still have usable antennas, solar arrays, and other components that are expected to last much longer than the life of the satellite, but currently there is no way to re-use them.

The Phoenix program envisions developing a new class of very small “satlets,” similar to nano satellites, which could be sent to the GEO region economically as a “ride along” on a commercial satellite launch, housed in a payload orbital delivery system (PODS).

A separate “tender” (satellite servicing robot) is also expected to be built and launched into GEO. Once the tender arrives on orbit, the PODS would be released from its commercial satellite host to become part of the tender’s “tool belt.”

The tender would be sent to a nonworking satellite to salvage the usable parts, replacing the defective electronics with the satlet and creating a functioning communication satellite.

Inserting new capabilities into a satellite is no simple task. Doing so as that satellite hurdles through space 22,000 miles above the Earth is a bit more challenging still. DARPA's Phoenix program, which hopes to repurpose retired satellites while they remain in orbit, seeks to fundamentally change how space systems could be designed here on earth and then sustained once in space.

This video illustrates some of the program's technical progress since it began in July 2012. As performers demonstrate the progress of their work in the lab, an artist's simulation of a fully-realized Phoenix demonstration scenario runs in the background to help illustrate how the technology would be applied. Demonstrations include flight-capable robotic arm manipulation with simulated space contact dynamics, tool development for the robotic arm with unique gripping and adhesion capabilities, autonomous robotic control software and hyperdexterous conformable robot modules in operation, among others.

Communication satellites in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), approximately 22,000 miles above the earth, provide vital communication capabilities to warfighters. Today, when a communication satellite fails, it usually means the expensive prospect of having to launch a brand new replacement communication satellite. Many of the satellites which are obsolete or have failed still have usable antennas, solar arrays and other components which are expected to last much longer than the life of the satellite, but currently there is no way to re-use them.

The goal of the Phoenix program is to develop and demonstrate technologies to cooperatively harvest and re-use valuable components from retired, nonworking satellites in GEO and demonstrate the ability to create new space systems at greatly reduced cost. Phoenix seeks to demonstrate around-the-clock, globally persistent communication capability for warfighters more economically, by robotically removing and re-using GEO-based space apertures and antennas from de-commissioned satellites in the graveyard or disposal orbit.

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DARPA Phoenix Satellite Servicing

Check out this artist's depiction of how a retired satellite's still usable antenna might one day be salvaged and turned into a new space asset as part of DARPA's Phoenix program. The goal of Phoenix is to develop and demonstrate technologies to cooperatively harvest and re-use valuable components from retired, nonworking satellites in GEO to create new space systems at greatly reduced cost. By robotically removing and re-using GEO-based space apertures and antennas from de-commissioned satellites in the graveyard or disposal orbit, space "junk" could become space "asset."

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The traditional process of designing, developing, building and deploying space technologies is long and expensive. Through Phoenix DARPA seeks to hasten the insertion of emerging technologies into space system development at much lower cost.

Critical to the success of the Phoenix program is active participation from the international and non-traditional space communities involved in vital technical areas such as:

Low-cost industrial manufacturing of high volume sheet metal and other structural materials

Additive manufacturing on various structural materials

The first keystone mission of the Phoenix program in 2015 plans to demonstrate harvesting an existing, cooperative, retired satellite aperture, by physically separating it from the host non-working satellite using on-orbit grappling tools controlled remotely from earth. The aperture will then be reconfigured into a ‘new’ free-flying space system and operated independently to demonstrate the concept of space “re-use.”

More than $300 billion worth of satellites are estimated to be in the geosynchronous orbit (GEO—22,000 miles above the earth). Many of these satellites have been retired due to normal end of useful life, obsolescence or failure; yet many still have valuable components, such as antennas, that could last much longer than the life of the satellite. When satellites in GEO “retire,” they are put into a GEO disposal or “graveyard” orbit. That graveyard potentially holds tens to more than a hundred retired satellites that have components that could be repurposed – with the willing knowledge and sanction of the satellite’s owner. Today, DoD deploys new, replacement satellites at high cost—one of the primary drivers of the high cost is the launch costs, which is dependent on the weight and volume of antennas. The repurposing of existing, retired antennas from the graveyard represents a potential for significant cost savings.

Students, professionals, public sought to create algorithm enabling capture of objects in space

The absence of gravity presents a significant challenge for precision robotic maneuvering and operations in space. Overcoming some of that challenge may be possible through the development of computer algorithms to simultaneously compensate for this limitation while directing precision operations.

Such algorithms could benefit a variety of space activities, including DARPA’s Phoenix program. A primary goal of Phoenix is to develop and demonstrate technologies to cooperatively harvest and re-use valuable components from retired, nonworking satellites in geosynchronous orbit.

DARPA’s InSPIRE program (International Space Station SPHERES Integrated Research Experiments), is sponsoring the Zero Robotics Autonomous Space Capture Challenge to develop such algorithms. The challenge, which kicks off Mar. 28, asks individuals and teams of programmers from around the world to develop a fuel-optimal control algorithm. The algorithm must enable a satellite to accomplish a feat that’s very difficult to do autonomously: capture a space object that’s tumbling, spinning or moving in the opposite direction.